College Football 2024 Preview: Big 10

Photo by Barry Reeger from AP Photo

The Big 10, now at 18 teams, is insanely rich and, along with the SEC, on its way to destroying the sport for their own monetary gain.

Neat!

Still, there will be some really good football played here, so let’s preview the upcoming year.

Tier 1: Championship Contenders

Ohio State Buckeyes

Last year was a “down year” for Ohio State, in which they went 11-1 yet again but lost to Michigan for the third straight year and didn’t have the best offense.

This year, Ohio State got the best safety in the country in Caleb Downs to join what may be the best defense in college football, an excellent core of wide receivers as always, and two excellent running backs in TreVeyon Henderson and Quinshon Judkins.

New quarterback Will Howard, while not perfect, is an improvement over Kyle McCord.

Ohio State is not only Big 10 favorites this year, they may be National Champion favorites.

Oregon Ducks

Dan Lanning has been excellent in Eugene, Oregon, and has the Ducks primed for an excellent season in year one of their Big 10 experience.

They lost Bo Nix, but replaced him sufficiently with Oklahoma transfer Dillon Gabriel, great weapons to support him, and a classic Lanning defense.

The Ducks are really, really good.

Tier 2: Dark Horses

Michigan Wolverines

Michigan lost a ton of talent to the NFL, as well as their head coach Jim Harbaugh, but it’s not all doom and gloom in Ann Arbor.

A good recruiting class comes in for the national champions, the defense should still be excellent, and new head coach Sherrone Moore not only knows Harbaugh’s style as his offensive coordinator previously, but even coached multiple games while Harbaugh was suspended for spying allegations last season.

And he did a pretty damn good job.

Michigan should take a natural step back, as most national champions do, but they’ll be fine, and may even be better than expected.

Penn State Nittany Lions

Penn State has had two problems the past few years.

One was losing big games to Michigan and Ohio State, and another was the offense not exactly living up to expectations.

Quarterback Drew Allar was supposed to fix that last year, and didn’t.

But now, Penn State brings in new offensive coordinator Andy Kotelnicki from Kansas, a man who has completely transformed that offense, and they don’t have Ohio State on the schedule this year.

Penn State can definitely contend this year.

We just need to actually see it happen.

Iowa Hawkeyes

Ok. I know.

I know.

But hear me out.

Iowa’s defense last year was stellar, and this year is expected to be even better.

If Iowa’s offense is even average (again, I know,) Iowa will easily be a top 25 team in the country and contenders for the Big 10.

And it could be, now that Iowa forced Ferentz to remove his son as offensive coordinator and turn the reigns over to Tim Lester.

The bar is so low for Lester, it’d be stunning if he didn’t clear it.

Tier 3: Bowl Game Bound

Washington Huskies

The National Runners Up not only lost their entire offense this offseason, but also their coach, as Kalen DeBoer left to replace Nick Saban at Alabama.

Still, Jedd Fisch comes from Arizona after a great season himself, and has done a good job in the portal replacing key members of the offense, most notably Will Rogers from Mississippi State.

Six wins is easily feasible.

USC Trojans

Lincoln Riley will have an offense that can score a lot of points, much like always.

Miller Moss showed in the bowl game against Louisville that he can sling it.

The problem with USC is the defense.

Alex Grinch is gone, and D’Anton Lynn takes over as defensive coordinator.

Lynn is a good offensive coordinator, so it should improve USC dramatically!

But this is Lincoln Riley, and I’ll need to see a good defense from a Riley led squad to believe it.

Wisconsin Badgers

Wisconsin’s offense joined the modern era last year, moving away from purely being a ground and pound team, and they struggled.

But that makes sense, as it was such a drastic change under first year head coach Luke Fickell.

Assuming it improves, and it should, along with Wisconsin and Fickell’s great defensive pedigree, and Wisconsin will be playing in a bowl.

Nebraska Cornhuskers

Matt Rhule very nearly got the Cornhuskers bowl bound in his first year at charge, but some absolutely abysmal quarterback play cost Nebraska dearly.

In steps 5 star freshman quarterback Dylan Raiola, who will definitely have some growing pains in a very tough conference, but should definitely be a huge improvement for the Huskers as they try to get back to another bowl.

I think he gets it done.

Maryland Terrapins

Let me tell you about September Maryland.

September Maryland is red hot. They win, they pull off upsets, they build excitement.

Then, they play the rest of the season, and it all goes downhill.

But the good news for Maryland is that there are 4 games in September and one in August! Meaning the Terps should very easily be 5-0 heading into October, only needing two more wins out of 7 to make a bowl (FCS teams don’t count towards bowl eligibility, and Maryland plays Villanova in September).

They can definitely do that, right?

Tier 4: Bowl Game Possible

Rutgers Scarlet Knights

Rutgers made a bowl last season, their first under the second term of Greg Schiano as he gets the Scarlet Knights out of the gutter.

He’s made great progress, and I think he’ll make great progress again.

But the conference is significantly harder now, and Rutgers was not blessed with an easy schedule this season.

C’est la vie.

Minnesota Golden Gophers

Minnesota has usually been very good with PJ Fleck at the helm, but last year was a disaster.

Fleck realized that and made changes in the coaching staff and through the transfer portal, but there’s no guarantee it works out well.

We just have to wait and see what 2024 brings.

Illinois Fighting Illini

Bret Bielema wants to play defense and run the football, and that’s what Illinois does.

It also helps that they have a solid running quarterback in Luke Altmyer.

But they still have much less talent than their contemporaries, which will make it challenging to hit the 6 wins mark.

UCLA Bruins

A talented team who has won 8 games or more the last three years under Chip Kelly, and still has some talent in the cupboard.

The problem is, Chip Kelly is no longer there, and taking over is DeShaun Foster who has been with the Bruins staff for a while now, so he is familiar.

The path to 6 wins is there. Foster just has to be a good head coach.

And I have no idea if he is or not.

Tier 5: I’d Be Baffled

Purdue Boilermakers

Last year, Ryan Walters tried to replace what Jeff Brohm left behind with lots of transfers, and it didn’t work.

So Walters is replacing that this season with even more transfers.

Will it work this time around?

Don’t know.

Sort of doubt it.

Northwestern Wildcats

After Pat Fitzgerald was let go for lack of institutional control due to scandal, Northwestern shocked everyone by going 8-5 under interim coach David Braun.

It was awesome, and a field good story for a lot of the players who were expected to be the laughing stock of college football.

The question is, was that the squad rallying around David Braun in times of turmoil? Or, was it a sign of a new era?

My money is on the former, but I’d be more than happy to be wrong.

Michigan State Spartans

Speaking of coaches being let go in scandal…

After Mel Tucker’s, uh, intimate phone calls were revealed, he was let go from Michigan State.

Enter, Jonathan Smith, the former Oregon State coach who had the Beavers playing excellent football.

He will succeed in Michigan State, but this is too hard of a job to fix in year one, even with the transfer portal.

Indiana Hoosiers

As is the job Curt Cignetti now has in Indiana.

Cignetti was fantastic at JMU, and I don’t doubt he’ll be good at Indiana, but if Michigan State is too hard to fix year one, Indiana is about five times harder, simply because it isn’t known as a football school.

Conference Championship Prediction

A lot of the times I expect something different, but this one feels pretty cut and dry.

Ohio State and Oregon are the two top dogs in the conference, and Ohio State and Oregon will be playing in Indianapolis.

And I’m going with the Buckeyes.

Ohio State Wins the Big 10 Championship